w, and fell in great floods
over us.

'Out away the stays--clear the wreck,' cried Tom, 'before the squall
catches her!'

And although we now laboured like men whose lives depended on the
exertion, the trailing sail and heavy rigging, shifting the ballast as
they fell, laid her completely over; and when the first sea struck her,
over she went. The violence of the gale sent me a considerable distance
out, and for several seconds I felt as though I should never reach the
surface again. Wave after wave rolled over me, and seemed bearing me
downwards with their weight. At last I grasped something; it was a
rope--a broken halyard; but by its means I gained the mast, which
floated alongside of the yawl as she now lay keel uppermost. With what
energy did I struggle to reach her! The space was scarcely a dozen
feet, and yet it cost me what seemed an age to traverse. Through all the
roaring of the breakers, and the crashing sounds of storm, I thought I
could hear my comrades' voices shouting and screaming; but this was in
all likelihood a mere deception, for I never saw them more!

Grasping with a death-grip the slippery keel, I hung on to the boat
through all the night. The gale continued to increase, and by daybreak
it blew a perfect hurricane. With an aching anxiety I watched for light
to see if I were near the land, or if any ship were in sight; but when
the sun rose, nothing met my eyes but a vast expanse of waves tumbling
and tossing in mad confusion, while overhead some streaked and mottled
clouds were hurried along with the wind. Happily for me, I have no
correct memory of that long day of suffering. The continual noise, but
more still, the incessant motion of sea and sky around, brought on
a vertigo, that seemed like madness; and although the instinct of
self-preservation remained, the wildest and most incoherent fancies
filled my brain. Some of these were powerful enough to impress
themselves upon my memory for years after, and one I have never yet been
able to dispel. It clings to me in every season of unusual depression
or dejection; it recurs in the half-nightmare sleep of over-fatigue, and
even invades me when, restless and feverish, I lie for hours incapable
of repose. This is the notion that my state was one of afterlife
punishment; that I had died, and was now expiating a sinful life by the
everlasting misery of a castaway. The fever brought on by thirst and
exhaustion, and the burning sun which beamed down u